I’m going to talk about another Christmas gift from my sister this week, one which was deliberately weird. She gave me this strange looking winged-woman-with-a-bull statuette which she had received as a white elephant gift at a party with her own church. She re-gifted it to me just to see my reaction when I opened it.
It was one of those studied reaction sort of moments when I did not know if the gift was serious or not. Not wanting to hurt my sister’s feelings, I kept my eyes down, trying not to take too long to ponder what to say. She saved me by starting to laugh.
Our text for this Sunday, Matthew 5:1-12, the Beatitudes is one of the most well-known and most loved portions of Scripture, but thoughtful consideration of them can leave us feeling a little like I did holding my sister’s odd gift. We are not quite sure what to make of them, wondering if they have any practical application for us at all. If we are serious in our response to the Beatitudes, they can leave us feeling a bit guilty for how far short we fall of their ideals such as meekness, righteousness, purity and peacefulness.
So I was very grateful to discover years ago in Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy a different approach to the Beatitudes than taking them as virtues to which I do not measure up. They are certainly that, but they may also be seen as our Lord’s compassion and blessing on humble and wretched states which clearly characterize me and others: spiritual poverty, deep sorrow, lack of righteousness. Willard believes even the second half of the list, four more virtue-like characteristics, can be seen as recognition of less than perfect people whom the Lord nonetheless chooses to bless.
Like my sister’s laughter at my discomfiture, our Lord offers us the Beatitudes with a gentle smile on His face, not wanting us to sit too long in embarrassed contemplation of our failures, failure even to appreciate the blessings. Instead, these blessings are meant to reassure us of His love for us despite our shortcomings and to help move us toward deeper appreciation of how truly blessed we are by His grace and the new people we might be come by that grace.